Social housing activists are holding a day of protest Saturday after their urban camp was broken up twice by Montreal police.
The tent city had been set up to bring awareness to cuts to subsidized housing.
FRAPRU, organizers of the tent city, said it will continue its protest in another form, in different areas and without tents.
Activists loudly welcomed Conservative Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel, Stephen Harper’s Quebec lieutenant, to the Palais des congres Saturday morning, where he was taking part in the conference on the Union of Municipalities of Quebec.
FRAPRU criticized the Conservative government for violating the right to housing by not renewing its existing funding for social housing. They said it endangers the affordability of housing for households with lower income.
FRAPRU coordinator François Saillant said he believes that due to Ottawa’s negligence, 5200 not-for-profit and public cooperative housing units will lose federal funding in Quebec in 2015. By 2018, this number would reach 21,000, Saillant said.
Asked about the matter by journalists at the UMQ conference, Lebel said the federal government had simply finished paying the mortgages for social housing.
“When you have finished paying for your house, you do not continue to give money to the bank,” he said, adding that his government understood the importance of social housing in urban areas.
“We put more money than other governments in social housing and will continue to do so," he said.
As of Saturday afternoon, FRAPRU has set up a third attempt at its tent city.
